New book: Tout va disparaître

Dutch photographer Hellen van Meene’s new book invites you to enter her world. Tout va disparaître (French for "Everything will
disappear", presents dreamlike portrait studies of really young people in their own individual surrounding environments.

Photographed in the USA, Russia and the Netherlands, these young people in carefully planned poses, with muted light seem to be
hovering between melancholy and an atmosphere of departure.

In addition to an introductory essay by astrophysician and writer Jörg M. Colberg, the book is the first to include a selection of
her interiors, still lifes and panoramic shots.

Solo exhibition: Sadie Coles HQ

In her second solo exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ Hellen van Meene will show new work made in the south of the US (2007) and around St. Petersburg,
Russia (2008).
The new works include photos made with a panoramic camera, and still lifes.

Sadie Coles HQ opened in April 1997 with exhibitions of new paintings by John Currin and an installation by Sarah Lucas,
at a time of unprecedented excitement in young contemporary art. Hellen's first exhibition at HQ was in the summer of 2000.
Artists represented by the gallery include Carl Andre, Matthew Barney, John Bock, Urs Fischer,
Jim Lambie, Raymond Pettibon, Elizabeth Peyton and Richard Prince.

Group exhibition: Courtesy Hans Kemna

A selection from the photography collection of Hans Kemna. Over the last 20
years, Kemna, the doyen of Dutch film and theatre casting, has built up a
collection of contemporary photography that focuses on ‘humanity’ in its
many guises. Besides works by well-known Dutch photographers like Céline van
Balen, Koos Breukel and Hellen van Meene, the exhibition also includes
photographs by international stars like Wolfgang Tillmans. Beauty and
sexuality form key themes – both in Kemna’s collection as a whole and in the
present presentation.

Group exhibition: Van Zoetendaal Collections

In 2006 the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag acquired a major collection of
photographs compiled by Amsterdam gallery owner and publisher Willem van
Zoetendaal. The collections' more
than 1000 items include not only early and previously unknown work by
modern photographers of the calibre of Rineke Dijkstra, Koos Breukel,
Blommers & Schumm, Hellen van Meene and Paul Kooiker, but also historic
photographs taken by figures like Cas Oorthuys and George H. Breitner. In
addition, the Van Zoetendaal Collection includes hundreds of pictures
classifiable as ‘vernacular photography’: usually anonymous amateur shots
and portraits taken by small local photographic studios like those of Gyula
Kardos in Hungary, Georg Eckert in the former GDR and To Sang in the
formerly working class and bohemian De Pijp area of Amsterdam. A wide
selection of pictures from the collection will be on show.

Willem van Zoetendaal (1950) began his career as art director
on a leading Dutch newspaper: the NRC Handelsblad. In 1991 he was appointed
head of the Photography Department at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in
Amsterdam. In November 2007 he closed his gallery on the Keizersgracht in
Amsterdam.

Group exhibition: 'Viva Lolita' - Curated by
James Putnam

For this exhibition James
Putnam has been "looking for [..] images that best convey the notion of
fading innocence and emerging sexuality in young teenage girls - or rather
this sense of duality, the two diametrically opposed states of innocence and
sexuality that make these images so ambiguous yet appealing."

Benefit Auction:
Celebrating 15 years of Blind Spot

Hellen van Meene has donated a work to this benefit auction hosted
by David Zwirner. All proceeds
will benefit Blind Spot Magazine, the magazine for photography-based fine
art. A portfolio of Hellen van published in issue 19.

The inaugural benefit auction held in April 2006 at Phillips de Pury
& Company was a great success, with 750 people in attendance and all
50+ lots sold. The proceeds generated provide much-needed operating funds
and support for the magazine.

The 89 lots of work by artists from the last 15 years of Blind Spot include Robert Adams, Roger Ballen, Katy Grannan,
Teun Hocks, Esko Männikkö, Vik Muniz, Stephen Shore, Alec Soth and Brian
Ulrich.

Group exhibition:
John Everett Millais / Me, Ophelia

John Everett Millais (1829-1896) was the foremost painter of the English
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and Britain's most successful artist of the
latter half of the 19th century. The exhibition, organised in collaboration
with Tate Britain in London, comprises some 100 works and is the first
monograph review since 1967 and the first exhibition since 1898 to cover all
aspects of Millais' career.

Concurrently on show will be "Me, Ophelia", a selection of photographs by, amongst others,
Rineke Dijkstra, Hellen van Meene and Inez van Lamsweerde. These works of
contemporary photography display striking parallels with Millais' oeuvre and
illustrate how the influence of Millais' famous Ophelia and other paintings
still lingers on.

Theatre performance:
Spring

Friday nights during the John Everett Millais exhibition (15 February - 18
May) will feature the theatre performance "Spring" by director Olivier
Provily. View the digital flyer (in Dutch, PDF, 569 KB).
There's also more info in English.
Hellen van Meene was asked to create the image used to promote the performance.

Note from the webmaster: I have seen this performance and please be warned that
Provily has been criticised for "idiosyncratic exercises" in what can be done with
"concepts like slowness and silence".

Group exhibition:
In Repose

"In Repose" is drawn from the collection of Dennis and Debra Scholl and
features women artists whose works in photography, video, sculpture and
sound boldly explore femininity, identity, and sexuality. The exhibition
includes historic figures such as Janine Antoni, Carolee Schneeman and Cindy
Sherman whose photography, film and performance work from the 1970s, 1980s
and early 1990s represent the historical context for much of the work in the
exhibition as well as works by a current generation of artists such as
Tanyth Berkeley, Rineke Dijkstra, Katy Grannan, Naomi Fisher, Anna Gaskell,
Catherine Opie, Pipilotti Rist, Meredyth Sparks, Hellen Van Meene, and
Bettina Von Zwehl who use such traditional genres as self-portraiture,
portraiture, and landscape to probe notions of female identity and the
uncertain territory between adolescence and adulthood.
The exhibition is accompanied by a tabloid publication.

The Scholls' collection, or at least works culled from it that are on
view in Moore's Goldie Paley Gallery, comprises primarily photographic
images, largely staged, of women who appear troubled, exposed, caught in
dicey situations, or all three. (The Scholls' reaction when told their
collection suggested a theme, which they reveal in the catalog's
foreword, is fascinating: "We were dumbfounded when one curator
described a main thread of the collection as 'women in peril' - we had
never considered that concept when acquiring works.")

One such photo could be Helen van Meene's late-'90s image of a pensive
young woman nude to the waist, her forearms and lower torso encircled
(bound?) by a lacy skirt.